Puzzles Can Be Deadly, by David S. Pederson

A historical quozy mystery! (see footnote ¹) The cover and title caught my eye, because I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, and the blurb, as it so often does, clinched it, so I requested and received an ARC.

Beware: death of a child; miscarriages; stillbirth; dementia; mental health issues; elder neglect/abuse; homophobia; sexual abuse/rape; botched back alley abortion.

Puzzles Can Be Deadly, by David S. Pederson

What a lovely little gem of a book this is! It reminds me of nothing so much as the best of Dame Christie’s work, with every detail carefully laid out before the reader, seemingly insignificant, until things are looked at through the proper lens, and then, suddenly, all those unconnected bits and pieces form a complete and pristine image.

Our protagonists, however, are as un-Christie-like as they can be; not only are they two queer men in a romantic relationship, but they are also young, very bright, and naïve–sometimes painfully so.

When the novel starts, Horace “Skip” Valentine, a 22 year old librarian of some means, and 25 year old WWII veteran Henry Finch, currently unemployed and with a widowed mother and several younger siblings to help support, have known each other for less than a year, and have been a couple almost as long. They are good with and for each other, so when Henry must travel out of town to pay a duty visit to a distant relative, Skip readily agrees to accompany him. It’s not, by far, his idea of a dream getaway, but when the one you love needs some moral support, you show up for them.

Once at Rutherford house in Ann Arbor, however, things seem to be just a bit off–from the house itself to every one of its residents.

Here’s how the publisher sets the story up:

A bizarre old woman who worships the memory of her lost son.
A nun with hidden secrets.
A spinster housekeeper with a secret of her own.
An angry young man with a troubled past.
A neighbor who claims to talk to dead people at seances.

Skip Valentine and Henry Finch encounter these eccentric people on their weekend trip to visit Henry’s uncle. When they learn of the groundskeeper who died in a mysterious fire shortly before they arrived, strange occurrences are imbued with ominous portent. The peculiar accidents, ghostly barking, a pounding heard late at night in the creepy old mansion, and a strange old box buried behind the burned-out carriage house all add up to something.

Skip yearns to investigate. It’s all so perplexing. But when another death raises the stakes, the puzzle turns deadly. The solution may lie in a curious rhyme told by the groundskeeper before he died, but first Skip and Henry must decipher it.

The novel, set over the course of one weekend in early October 1950, is told in third person, past tense, and almost exclusively from Skip’s point of view. The chapter headers are the setting and the time of the scene, such as “After dinner Friday evening, October 6, 1950, The Rutherford house” and so on; I found this delightful.

The narrative voice is just a bit rambling, with a lot of little details thrown in, which may not be to every reader’s taste, but which helped bring the period and setting to life. It is also dialogue-heavy, which worked really well to give the reader a lot of information without long paragraphs of exposition, as well as deepening the characterizations.

The two young men travel to Ann Arbor to visit Henry’s uncle and great aunt; as it happens, there is some family money and, due to a sparse family tree and some old legal stipulations, Henry is the heir presumptive, and therefore his signature is required on several legal forms.

The household they are visiting consists of Uncle Ambrose Rutherford, a bachelor in his late forties; his elderly mother Gabria, who seems to suffer from rapidly advancing dementia; Jane Grant, the housekeeper, and Jake Bartlett, a somewhat truculent young man acting as the household’s dogsbody. A more recent addition is sister Barnabas, a nun and nurse from a nearby convent, who has been living at the house for the past few months to help take care of Mrs Rutherford as the latter’s condition worsened.

The interpersonal dynamics between these people, however, are not as straightforward as one would expect. Mrs Rutherford has moments of acute lucidity interspersed with confusion, yet even when she is most herself, she’s acerbic towards her son, and occasionally downright cruel, especially to Jake.

Jake is a physically imposing youth, just about 18, who is probably autistic and perhaps also intellectually disabled; we are told that he is clumsy, has trouble interacting with people, which led to him dropping out of school, and that he gets very angry, very easily. It is strange, then, that the Rutherfords would keep him on.

There’s his aunt Jane, the curt-to-the-point-of-rudeness housekeeper. Efficient and non-nonsense, Miss Grant could easily get a position involving less backbreaking work in a household with other domestic staff; yet, she remains a Rutherford house, where she is now cook, maid, and part-time nurse to the difficult and often abusive Mrs Rutherford.

Uncle Ambrose, by all appearances a friendly man, suffers his mother’s abuse with patient forbearance; she has only gotten this bad over the past few months, he explains to Henry and Skip, and her older sister, Mrs Lillian Waters, will come over on Sunday night to help move Mrs Rutherford to a long-term care clinic for the elderly.

There’s Sister Barnabas, peering disapprovingly over her thick-lens glasses, imparting unwanted and unwelcome advice, and doing a rather poor job of keeping track of Mrs Rutherford; and Mrs Savage, a widowed neighbor who used to visit Mrs Rutherford every Friday for years, but who has kept her distance since around the time of the fired that killed the groundskeeper.

Then there’s the house itself. Clearly once a magnificent home, it is now gloomy and musty, after years, if not decades, of neglect; between the dust, must and cobwebs, to say nothing of the nightly barking and pounding, the atmosphere is quite unnerving and unwelcoming.

For their part, Skip and Henry are very earnest and wholesome, and so adorably transparently into each other, it triggers a couple of ugly conversations with Henry’s Uncle Ambrose, the story’s main stand-in for a bigoted wider world. Skip in particular is deeply kind, and not shy about speaking out when someone else is unkind; he even admonishes Henry a couple of times over some unfortunate comments.

The author does not make light of the risks queer people of every persuasion faced in the U.S. in the 1950s; instead, the writing shows how people can give themselves away even when they’re well aware of the need for discretion–especially young people in the throes of their first serious relationship. So even though Skip and Henry code-switch between their private conversations and when they interact with other people together, someone paying attention would see the relationship intimacy subtext between them.

Speaking of intimacy, though some of their banter is fairly risqué, there’s nothing more explicit on the page than a couple of kisses.

Skip has a deeply curious mind–generally a good quality in a librarian–and he is also quite observant, and keeps track of details marvelously. He also shares both his observations and conclusions with Henry as soon as the opportunity to do so presents itself (relationship goals right there). Whenever possible, Skip seeks outside confirmation of whatever he’s been told, and occasionally he gently steamrolls over Henry in order to do so.

Even though I got some of the essential details of the crime right fairly early on (not for nothing have I read literally hundreds if not thousands of cozy mysteries in my life), the author managed to sneak a few surprises into the narrative. The build up to the climactic scene was very well done, and the traditional “here is what actually happened” conversation at the end was very welcome.

Between the two main characters interactions and the way the facts of the case are both revealed and then connected to each other, I thoroughly enjoyed the ride; I would definitely read more if the author turns it into a series. And may I say, I loved the author’s historical facts list at the end of the book.

Puzzles Can Be Deadly gets a 9.00 out of 10

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¹ Origin of the term in the footnote to this review.